Episode 34 – Dr. Nido Qubein – Leaders On Leadership
The two most important words are influence and impact. What are you influencing and how lasting is your impact? On today’s podcast, Dr. Tracey Jones brings on Dr. Nido Qubein to share his insights on the subject of leadership. Dr. Qubein is President of High Point University and led its extraordinary transformation. Under his leadership, HPU has experienced tremendous growth, including more than tripling their enrollment, expanding their campus from 90 to 500 acres, establishing six new academic schools and so much more. Dr. Qubein talks about the responsibilities of a leader in influencing change and creating impact in our world. He also shares the habits that help him stay on point and focused.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Dr. Nido Qubein – Leaders On Leadership
We have a special guest, author, speaker, businessman, leader extraordinaire. He even had a documentary made on his life. Dr. Nido Qubein is the President of High Point University. He has been a long-time friend of my father, and a dear friend to us here at Tremendous Leadership. You're not going to want to miss this one.
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This series is called Leaders on Leadership. I am beyond excited to welcome our guest, Dr. Nido Qubein. He has led the extraordinary transformation at High Point University, which is a private liberal art school in higher education institution located in High Point, North Carolina, where he has served as President since 2005. He has outlasted most tenure of presidents. After coming to America as a teenager, he built a successful career in business, consulting and professional speaking. He's delivered more than 6,000 presentations across the world and serves on numerous boards. You need to check out his bio and see where he's all plugged in. Under his leadership, HPU has experienced tremendous growth including more than tripling their enrollment, expanding their campus from 90 to 500 acres, establishing six new academic schools and much more. There’s even a biography done on him on the Biography Channel. It is with great pleasure I welcome incredible speaker, businessman, author extraordinaire, academian, leader of leaders, and dear friend, Dr. Nido Qubein. Welcome, Nido.
Thank you. It's my pleasure being with you. It is a tremendous day and you’re a tremendous person. Your daddy would be proud of all that you have done, all the influences, impact that you're bringing in our world, working with leaders, bringing education and inspiration in ways that few can do as well as you can. Congratulations to you. It's my privilege to be with you. Thank you for making this program available.
You are most welcome. For those of you reading, Dr. Qubein and my father would go way back. We even have several of Nido's books. They were both speakers, incredible leaders and motivators. He was a dear friend to my father. He has been a huge supporter of me since I came back to take the realm. I email him, he answers me right back and I didn't sleep much knowing I was going to have the honor of talking to you. I wanted to talk to you as a leader in many different ways. My father wrote a book called The Price of Leadership. He outlines the price you have to pay as a leader. For emerging leaders out there who sometimes think, “I'm getting pushback, everybody's not on board or I feel like I'm alone at the top,” I want to unpack The Price of Leadership, the four points with you.
If you could share some of your insights about some of the things that you have learned as a leader and are still learning in your leadership role. One of the first price of leadership that my father outlined is loneliness. We've all heard that it's lonely at the top. My father says everybody's lonely, old people, young people, men, women, black, white. The leadership loneliness is slightly different. He talks about that sometimes, leadership loneliness is when you have to pave the way and go out on your own. He always said he never saw a monument in a park dedicated to a committee. Can you tell me about times in your leadership career where you experienced loneliness?
There's a mega difference between being alone and experiencing loneliness. All of us like to have time alone. I certainly value my time alone. I get up between 3:00 and 4:00 every morning and I have a couple of hours alone. God and me starting the day together. I read, study, prepare my ideas, make notes and so on. When I come to work officially at the office, I'm ready and I’m way ahead of the pack. That time alone is valuable. I like to go walk on the beach alone and do it at times when there's nobody on the beach. The sky is above me, the ocean is next to me, and the sound of the birds reminds me of this creation that God has allowed us to enjoy and be in, and the grace that he has in our lives as we pursue our own goals and aspirations.
Loneliness is a completely different thing. You can be in a crowd of 10,000 and feel the loneliness. You can be in a wonderful relationship and it seems that way to the outside world but feel lonely. Loneliness is more about not having someone to share your love, ideas, fears and emotions with. In a leadership context, loneliness is when you do not have a trusted team around you. One of the biggest mistakes that a leader makes is that he or she does not evolve, develop and grow a trusted team around them. What you want to do is you want to make sure that there are people that you can talk with and talk to without reservation.
You’re not worried about them violating confidentiality, criticizing you or judging you. You just pour your heart at. This is important for all of us. This is what people do with a therapist. They go to a counselor and they express their feelings. It always sits on the shoulder, all the responsibility. There's a reason why a CEO of a large corporation makes a lot of salaries. It's not the hours he or she would spend, it's the enormity of the responsibility. At the end of the day, the buck does stop at that leader's desk. That creates a sense of loneliness if you don't have people that you can trust and an inner circle that you can chat with, not to whine. Whining is the opposite of thanksgiving, but rather have people you trust or an inner circle so you can share ideas and test ideas with, examine your thoughts, and listen to their feedback.
Often I find, out of the most unlikely sources come the greatest inspiration. That's what Charlie “Tremendous” Jones was famous for. He would say something you hadn't thought about. He would say it in a way that it came from an unlikely place. It would make an impression on you. It stayed with you and you thought about it. You grew because of it. It's the responsibility of a leader to exercise the skill of removing the loneliness from his or her life. You do that in a number of ways. You do it by reading. Your dad used to say, “It’s the books you read and the people you know,” and that’s true. You got to read and read because when you read, you're inspired. I still read motivational books. People say, “You're at the tail end. What are you doing that for?” I do that all the time. I read a good book a week. I read other stuff that deals with my own work.
Number one is make sure that stuff is coming in your brain, heart and soul that tells you that God loves you. You're not allowed to feel lonely. If you're lonely, talk to God. Your family loves you. There are people out there who want to march onwards and forward with you holding your hand as you tackle the challenges of this world. The other reason that people in leadership feel that sense of loneliness is they have to take risks. Leaders take risks. You feel like, “What if I make a mistake?” In certain environments in America, you hear people saying, “We want this person to resign.” What they are saying is, “I disagree with what this person is saying.”
If you look at it from that leader's perspective, that leader has had to take a risk in making that decision. Sometimes you're not sure because you never have 100% of the information you need to make the right decision. You're making a decision based on 70%, 75% of the information. You're having to use your frame of reference, judgment, maturity, wisdom to make the right decision. That creates that sense of loneliness of, “If it doesn't work, have I done something bad.” We have to take responsibility for our own behavior, thinking, and positioning in the world as well.
I got my PhD and the key to that was followership, exemplary followers. You have to build that team. You're going to see it and you have to make the call even though you may have clout with your followers or your team. Was there ever a time where you had to make a decision and you didn't have that many people with you when it first started? Eventually, they'll come along, but there are times where you have to make the call and you're it. Can you tell me about that?
Influence And Impact: One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make is that they don’t develop and grow a trusted team around them.
When I came to America at the age of seventeen, I’m feeling all alone. On my first Christmas in this country, I had no place to go. The school shut down. I find a church that took in what then we called foreign students and turned the educational building and some school classrooms into bunk beds. I understand loneliness from the practical human side. When I first came to High Point University in 2005, it was a small school. It was one person and one journalist called it the dusty old college. It was set in his own ways at Carol Dweck at Stanford. It had a fixed mindset. It didn't have a vision for the future.
I came here to make a difference. In life, the two most important words are influence and impact. What are you influencing? How lasting is your impact? I had lots of ideas about how we can turn things around. Some of these were revolutionary ideas. Some of them were mechanical things, we put flags, benches and fountains. Some people didn't like that. Their frame of reference did not allow for that. It was a shift that was huge. We went into academic programs that we start adding all kinds of academic programs. We went into a promotional program that some people didn't feel perhaps was right or adequate. For the first 2 or 3 years at High Point, I sense that. I never let myself get into this loneliness from a psychological perspective.
I pumped back quickly. I have lots of days when I feel down, but I feel it down for a few moments. My faith does not allow me to dwell in that zone. I believe that if you put your faith and your courage together, you have faithful courage. If you have faithful courage, you have the armaments you need to do whatever it is you want to do in life. There’s no such thing as unrealistic dreams, only unrealistic timelines. At that moment, I felt that loneliness. I also felt that was my responsibility. I need to reach out, communicate and connect with people. I ask myself this question, “How much does that person feel first?” This person will believe in the mission I'm recommending. As more and more people believed and saw the positive results, I had a bigger team, more believers, and more followers. It’s not because I said, “I am the leader and you must follow me.” That came out of their sense of beliefs.
Your beliefs lead your behaviors, and your behaviors lead to results in life. Our belief system is everything. A skilled leader and an authentic leader first understands that it’s authenticity above charisma any day of the week. Secondly, they understand that they can't do it alone. Nobody can do it alone. We have to have people around us. Jesus had the disciples he gathered. If we feel loneliness, we must also take some responsibility. How must I learn? What must I read? What guidance must I gather so that I can overcome that in a responsible, meaningful and purposeful way?
I want to dovetail a follow-up question for loneliness. The second price my father says is weariness. He used to say, “There's miserable miserable and there's happy miserable.” It's what you said, “Life is tough.” Even for you, Dr. Qubein, you float on clouds, exude rainbows and happy stuff all the time. Dad said, "No, you make a choice.” His point there was, “If you're doing anything worthwhile, you have to realize you're going to be surrounded by the authentic followers or the trusted team, but you're always going to have some people that aren't doing their part of it. You still have to shoulder that burden and responsibility.”
Talking about weariness, how do you handle this? Back to the first part where you talked about the team, when do you look at followers that aren't all in and say, “I can't pull you.” There's a weariness of doing the great works. I can remember being out during the first Gulf War and going to bed knowing that I did everything I could this day. I'm battle-weary but I'm happy. There's the weariness of dealing with people that are a constant drag on the organization. It isn't keeping me motivated. It's keeping everybody else from dragging me and the organization. Can you unpack how you dealt with that?
Weariness is different than tiredness. If you're tired, that's a physical state. Weariness is more of an emotional state. It’s more about not liking what you're doing, almost giving up, feeling like you don't have the skill to do it or feeling like nobody cares about your ideas. You become weary of what is. Tiredness is when you have a tough day, you go home, work out, put your feet up and relax. All of a sudden, you can overcome, have a good night's sleep and you're good. In life, there are natural states of mind. There are natural events and circumstances that will happen in everyone's life.
They will have different frames around them but it happened to all of us. For example, in life I will have people who don't like me. It doesn't matter who I am or what I do. I have to accept that as a part of life. In life, there are people who will not give 110% of their effort. I have to accept that. Not everybody is as motivated as I am. Not everybody is going to believe in the cause as I might. The question is what do you do with that? At some point, you have to identify it. Every leader must identify the levers in their organization. It’s like a seesaw that has a lever in the middle, the point of leverage. It’s the same thing in an organization.
You can’t say, “I have 2,000 employees.” You have to say, “Who are the levers in my organization who calls motion, movement and positive results? Let me focus on ensuring that the levers I have on my team can make things happen, believe in the vision, mission and values of our organization.” That's what I focus on. I don't try to get everybody to agree with me. Like your dad, I've given 7,500 public speeches and seminars. Only an idiotic and immature professional speaker would assume that every time they're going to love you, all of them. Only an immature speaker would assume that a standing ovation means every person who stood up is in love with you. That's not true. There's always someone who says, “I don't like this speaker. I don’t like the way they look and what they say.” You expect that.
If it's a lever in your organization and they're not on board, your question was, “What do you do? How do you react to that?” Number one, the least you owe any person is to train and educate them. The most unfair thing in leadership is to expect someone to do something you have not trained, coached, guided, and not mentored them. I'm a mentor more than I am a leader in that sense. I make sure when I explain something to some, when I disagree with something or show you a better way, I will explain to you why that's a better way. I'm more interested in the ‘why.’ If your ‘why’ is straight, they figure out the how. I'm also more interested in that lesson that you learn. You can apply it the next time. Otherwise, I’m constantly trying to guess at everything that you're doing. You'll never build an organization that way.
It's all about making sure those levers and the inner circle team is with you. If they're not, you train, educate, coach, model and mentor them. If they still don't respond, you have to make a change. I am not bashful about respectfully, lovingly suggest to someone that they need to seek a new venture in life because this is not working out. You owe that to people. You help people. Nobody should be doing something they don't love to do. None of us love everything we do all the time, but you have to have a legitimate cycle of being in love with what you do, otherwise, you're not going to do your best work.
For your core team too, it not only drains you as a leader but it drains them. It's good to pay attention because I know organizations will lose good people by not dealing with the bad. Somebody always asks me, “How do you keep good people?” You train them and you give them the means and the resources for success, but then you also remove the obstacles and stumbling blocks. You've been in bureaucratic organizations like me. Anything big, you're going to have your level. It's the parable of the sowers. Some of those seeds are going to fall on hard soil no matter what. The third price he talked about is abandonment. He always said that we need to abandon what we like and what we want to think about in favor of what we ought and what we need to think about. You alluded to your mornings and how you start. With all the stuff coming into you and I can't even imagine the calls you get and requests, how do you stay on point, on mission and on target?
Influence And Impact: The most unfair thing in leadership is to expect someone to do something you have not trained, coached, or mentored them.
When your values in life are clear, your actions will always follow in the right direction. That's all about values clarification. If you're unsure of your values, you will be inconsistent in your actions. I like to drink a glass of wine, but I have no desire to be drunk. If somebody says, “Let's go out all night,” I have no desire for this. I'm clear about that. Telling the truth is a value. If you have that value, you're not worried about going out there and lying to everybody about everything. That's all about value. If your purpose in life is clear, it leads to the passion that can lead you to better things. If you have passion, you'll have energy. If you have energy, then you can activate that energy and you'll have action.
If you have action, you're likely to have results, and results rule. If you don't take action, you can expect like, “How does it go?” You can't expect your ship to come back if you haven't sent one out. The action leads to results, the results lead to success, success leads to significance, significance leads to joy and happiness, and happiness goes right back and feeds into purpose. You want people to abandon thoughts, behavioral patterns, relationships or positions in life that deflect from your basic values, and rob you of the privilege, blessing and the pleasure of doing what you're good at, that deny you the opportunity to give from your soul and your heart all that you can. It disarms you from providing the love, compassion and empathy that you should be doing in life. That's one sense of abandonment.
There are things you must abandon. Like your dad said, “There are things you must abandon.” That's what transformation is. Transformation is different than change. I can change all kinds of transactional stuff. Transformation is about truly evolving like a butterfly that’s evolving. It's about what are the things I must abandon to do that? When I came to academia, I was in business for many years. I thought and behaved a certain way. I had to learn new things. I abandoned certain approaches and became a better person because of it.
Abandonment also has another perspective. That is when we abandon others. If you give me your position about a matter and I abandoned your position by simply dismissing it verbally, non-verbally, consciously, subconsciously, then I'm abandoning you as a sister, colleague and fellow citizen. Abandonment is also dangerous. There's good and bad abandonment. If you know what you feel and who you are, what you stand for and what you want to accomplish in life, those things come easily for you. You know which direction to go. If I want to go to the beach and I get into my car way before GPS, and drive aimlessly, I may not end up at the beach. I may end up in the mountains, but if I know the road to the beach and it's clear to me, it's nighttime and I have headlights or during the day and I can see the sunshine, then I'll get there just fine in due time. Life is no different than that. Life is like that.
High Point University is a premier life university institution. We teach life skills. We teach academic material in the classroom. We even have a graduate Master's degree called Master's in Communication and Business Leadership. Those are the three things you must have, I don't care what your major is, because life is difficult and demanding, and the world is flat. Leaders have demands, requests and expectations of them that are quite different many years ago with technology and all that. We have a responsibility. I say to our students, staff and faculty, “We have a responsibility to keep ourselves up front and center with the kind of skills, knowledge, experience and wisdom that can lead us forth."
I'm glad you brought up the abandonment issue because we are going to have to keep everybody on point, but you don't want to alienate your team members. Sometimes we get hyper-focused. It's like, “No, I said we're going this way.” You are an incredibly driven person. You are genetically coded that way from when you came back to everything you've accomplished. We know that you have honed this skill. It took me seven years to get through my undergrad, I almost didn't pass, and then I get my PhD. I hear a lot of people say, “I'm ADHD, I’m scatterbrained, I have so many things, and I have trouble getting focused.” What are the habits that you recommend especially to younger emerging leaders? Their brains operate differently because of the way they see many different things, process information, and the different critical thinking skills that are lacking. What do you think habit-wise helped you to stay on point and stay focused?
There are many of them. I'll give you a few. We must all acknowledge that good habits are hard to develop but they're easy to live with. Bad habits are easy to develop but they're hard to live with. When you develop habits that are healthy, they serve you well for a long period of time. If you go with the crowd and develop these habits, and you are a transactional person, you will regret it in all kinds of ways. Balance in life means physical, financial, educational, reputational and relational balance. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces must come together to make the whole person. Happiness is not something you get by reading a book or listening to a speaker. Happiness comes from within. The question is what are the external factors that can feed us so that this happiness will come from within?
In my life, I've developed many habits. I'll give them to you without any priority order. Number one, early to bed, early to rise, that's me. At 9:00 or 9:30, I'm in bed. At 3:00 or 3:30, I'm up. I love my morning and I do a lot of work in the morning. That doesn't work for everybody but that’s the habit that works for me. Number two, I write or call four people every day. When somebody is sick, I'm going to write to them. When it's the birthday, I'm going to call them. I have it on my calendar. I follow-up every single day, seven days a week, 365 days a year or 366 days in a leap year. It always is like that for me.
Number three, about a week before Thanksgiving, I think about the people I may have had some disagreement with, people that I may have quarrel with. I take the first step. I'll call them up and say, “Can we go to lunch? Can we talk? I'm sorry about what happened.” Maybe it's their fault or maybe it's not even my fault but I don't want to carry it on my shoulder this baggage. I want to get rid of it. Baggage weighs us down. Get in the habit of getting rid of baggage. Number four, every day I make time for my family whether it's a phone call or an email. Sometimes I'll email them an article I read or it's something I saw on Facebook that I forward to them. Whatever it is, I make sure that I'm ever-present. When I was full-time speaking, having grown up in a home like that and you're doing it, I was gone all week. I have four children and never missed a birthday.
I would fly all night from Los Angeles to be there Saturday morning for my loud four-year-old kid's birthday, and then fly right back to give a speech there that night. These are habits that you develop in your life. At High Point University, I tell everybody to develop the habit of the sundown rule. Answer every email, return every call by sundown every day. People will love you for it. People want an immediate response. When you show that, you're showing love, compassion and caring towards them. These are all habits. We have 2,000 employees at High Point University and almost 6,000 students. If it's their birthday, their dad passes away, their mother is in the hospital or the student has a mishap of some sort, I'm going to call them, send them some balloons, some flowers or something. These are habits. We develop these habits. If I read a book that I like, I say, “Who else might like this book?” I'll try to send them a copy of that book.
You then have the habits that are more mental and drive you in mega ways. Habits like being positive, but being positive doesn't mean you can't be negative sometimes. There are some things I'm negative about. Be positive means be in a state of positivity. Allow yourself a pity party, sit there in the corner, whine, complain, cry and say the world's coming to an end, but put a time slot for that. Is it 30 minutes? Is it an hour? Is it a day? Whatever it is, promise yourself you will get out of it.
There are times in my life when I thought the world was coming to an end. Think about COVID-19 and how it affected us at High Point University and beyond. At some point you have to say, “Stop, get back into positivity, do some action, make something happen, take a step forward. Don't sit there and bemoan what is. Try to imagine what can become.” You must have the habit of being. Most of us have the habit of to-do lists. We all have to-do lists. We'll write them down and Post-it notes on paper. We put them in our notes, iPhone, iPad, etc. You can't make it in life based on your to-do list.
Influence And Impact: Balance in life means physical, financial, educational, reputational, and relational balance. It's like a jigsaw puzzle; all the pieces must come together to make the whole person.
You must have a to-be list. The doing is the by-product of the being. I do honest things because I'm an honest person. An honest person makes me do honest things. There’s a big difference with my being state. I'm a loving person, I go around, give compliments and encourage people. Therefore, I do those things. The doing must follow the being. I want to become more patient, more generous, a better steward and a better disciple. Here’s the trick, you can't have a to-be list unless you also have a stop doing list because to become, you gather new personhood, but you must get rid of some things that hold you back.
I used to have a wealth seminar where people would come in for the weekend, we'll talk about wealth building in its largest definition, not just money but relationships, happiness and all that. I always make a statement and say, “Most people say, 'How can I become wealthy?’” That's the wrong question. You should be asking yourself, “What are the things that I'm doing now that are keeping me from becoming wealthy?” If I can get rid of those things that are keeping me from becoming wealthy, take the word out from becoming happy, good father, good president of the university or whatever it is. What are those things? Get rid of them. We're humans and we're not intended to be perfect, but we better be extraordinary because God didn't sit in heaven and say, “On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'm going to create extraordinary people but on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, I'm going to create some Ding-a-lings.” We were created in God's image, which means we are extraordinary. We are the ones who mess it up.
Dad would always say that too. He said, “I've done some things that go in the success column to make me successful, but I got to focus on all this stuff I allowed in my day that contribute to me being a failure.” You got to sponge up. You’re now going back to school. I had to cut off the TV and I had to come off certain boards. They're like, “How do you do it?” Everything is a trade-off in life. If you want to get focused on health or anything you want, it's about putting that work in. Until you do it for yourself and until you are self-motivated, that intrinsic control you talked about, nobody can convince you to do it. You have to do it yourself.
There are three things in life, who you spend time with is who you become. Number two, what you choose is what you get. Your present circumstances don't define where you're going to end up. They only define what you start from our choices. Number three, how you change is how you succeed. Success comes in all kinds of layers, colors and sizes. How you succeed is dependent on how you change, evolve and grow. If all you have is information, people will use you and discard you. If what you have is knowledge, people will call upon you only when they need you. Think about the dentist, doctor, etc. If you have wisdom, people will respect and follow you. The Bible says that. In our way of seeking, we ought to seek wisdom. Wisdom allows you to become the leader that you and your dad has written about and you speak about.
That brings us to the fourth price of leadership, which is vision. A lot of times, I know when I was a younger leader, I'd be like, “This is for Steve Jobs and Oprah.” I'm not a visionary. I like doing what needs to get done. My father's point was that's what vision is. It’s seeing what needs to be done, then going and doing it. Share with me how you grow in wisdom? Anything else as far as wisdom because for leaders, that's important. You don't just transact and gain knowledge because otherwise, people just come to you. Transforming is growth. We have God's seed in us. If we had the mind to Christ, we never stop learning and transforming.
Sometimes I'm called the visionary leader and I don't know what that means. It sounds like a fancy word. Vision could be much simpler than that. I know people who have what appears to some a small vision but it makes a big difference where that seed is planted. Some people want to change the world. Some people just want to change their neighborhood, or build the biggest church in the world, or feed the soul of one other human being. All of these are important and none of us can minimize, judge or quantify them based on our own frame of reference. The Bible says, “When people have no vision, they perish.” Vision is indeed a great place to start.
You have to have four things in life if you're going to lead and do something of measure and meaning in whatever business you're in. Number one, you have to have a clear vision. Having a vision is not enough, it must be a clear vision. People don't want to follow a vision if you are not consistent as a leader. One of the greatest compliments you can get as a leader is the consistency, that someone knows what you believe. You might change your mind from day-to-day based on new information and discovery. I know that you're going to act in this way. I know your expectations are going to follow these principles. That's called the clarity of vision.
The second piece is a solid strategy. The reason a vision is important is because it can lead to a strategy. You can answer three questions. Who am I now? Who do I want to become? How do I get there? Those questions give birth to an even clearer vision. These two are connected. You started with this vision, you put together the strategy, then you go back and realign your vision. The third one is practical systems and that's connected too. I love basketball, but I can't have the vision that I'm going to be Michael Jordan. That would be a stupid vision. How would I know that's a stupid vision? I go out there and play basketball, and be ding-a-ling at it, and I realize that vision isn’t the right vision.
We have to think of the practical systems. Even people who work with me will come to me with an idea and I go, “Is that practical?” Practical means, “Can we do it with relative ease? Can we do it with existing resources? Can we do it without unnecessary risks?” The last one is consistent execution. I could care less about how great your vision is. If you don't actualize it, what good is it? Your vision is to write the greatest book on the face of this earth. It’s like, “Have you written the first chapter? Do you have an outline?” I'm pragmatic when it comes to those things. I'm a pragmatic business guy who believes in those fundamentals and therefore I don't sway too much. Peter Drucker used to say, “What business are we in? Who's our customer?” If you don't know the answer to those two questions, go all the way back to the A in the alphabet because you don't make any decisions without knowing the answers to those questions.
A lot of what you’re saying is there's this intrinsic confidence that we have to have. We have to bring it. We have to know what we're doing, show up and be engaged. We have to find leaders that bring out the best in us and find followers that bring out the best in us as leaders. We also have to have competency. We have to exit. We have to have the means, resources, systems and the right team. It's the two sides of the same coin. I can have all the dreams in the world, but it has to be realistic. I’m 5'10” so everybody’s like, “Basketball Jones, too tall Jones.” I'm like, “You have never seen me try and dribble, and walk at the same time.” You have to have a reasonable expectation of success and see value in what you're trying to do. Otherwise, you're just punching the clock. You're just tracking time for money.
A vision can change. The vision is different than values. Values are much more consistent. They are principles and foundational. My vision when I came to High Point University changed dramatically from my vision when I was a consultant, speaker, author and so on. That's perfectly okay. As new information comes into our life, we can adapt and realign as need be. You can have more than one vision. You can have a vision for this endeavor, and another vision for this endeavor. The discussion about visioning is all about purpose. What is it you want to do with your life? God gave your nostrils and gave you life. You breathe oxygen every day and you pay nothing for it.
Don't you think you owe something for the space that you occupy on this earth? What are you going to do with those gifts? That's what it is. You can take that and put it in little boxes based on what profession you're in, what you're leading, who you're leading, and how big or how small. I know three things about myself that I discovered of late. Number one, I am as passionate about what I do as I was when I was 25. I get up in the morning and ready to go. Your dad built the day he went to heaven. He was pumping it like crazy the last few weeks of his life. He was at it and nobody was holding him back.
Influence And Impact: One of the greatest compliments you can get as a leader is consistency.
You're not going to put a seatbelt on that guy and hold him down. That comes from your heart. You don't learn that in school. You learn that out of your inner soul, from the models, mentors and heroes in your life. They affect and influence who you become. Number two, I'm smarter than ever before. I don't mean that in a sense of taking an IQ test, I mean I grew in wisdom. I let experience and not just be defined by years. I let the experience feed my being. Third, I realize more now than ever before, I don't have all the answers. I'm smarter than ever before but I'm not smart enough. I've got to learn every day, which is why I continue to read books.
I like the books. I like to read the pages of a book. I read books, I listen and I attend seminars. I want to learn because the more I learn, the more I realize how little I know, and how much there is out there that can benefit me in my life. What I'm saying is school is never out for the pro. We have to be in a continuum of learning. That's why I appreciate you, Tracey, because what you do, what your business does, and what your dad always did. You reach out to all quadrants in all kinds of ways to feed people's minds, hearts and souls through the books that you publish, the podcasts that you make, the speeches that you give, and all the services that you render. That is the highest level of stewardship and service. For that, I honor you and thank you for being my friend.
Thank you. Can you tell our readers how can they contact you, read more about you, some of your wisdom, and hear more about High Point University?
Go to our web page at HighPoint.edu. You'll see lots of stuff and a lot of my interviews with people like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and some famous authors, and learn about this special institution at Highpoint North Carolina, which is growing abundantly and with purpose. It’s truly changing the lives of young men and women in magical and wondrous ways. I thank you for asking that question.
You're welcome. I want to thank you. You have given me additional food for thought. I love it when you wrapped up that we're growing as leaders. The more we know, the more we realize we don't know. It's not a scary and embarrassing thing, but a beautiful thing.
It's a challenging thing.
I thank you for sharing that because leadership is lifelong learning and you epitomize that. I thank you for always being there for me, always responding immediately, and being on this with everything you have going on. God bless you. I’m praying for you and everything you've got going on.
Thank you, Dr. Tracey. I enjoyed talking with you. God bless you too. Hopefully, I'll see you soon.
Take care, Nido.
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About Dr. Nido Qubein
Dr. Nido Qubein came to the United States as a teenager with little knowledge of English and only $50 in his pocket. His journey has been an amazing success story. The Biography Channel and CNBC aired his life story titled "A Life of Success and Significance."
As an educator, he is president of High Point University, an undergraduate and graduate institution with 4,300 students from 40 countries. He has authored two dozen books and audio programs distributed worldwide.
As a business leader, he is chairman of the Great Harvest Bread Company with 220 stores in 43 states. He serves on the boards of several national organizations including BB&T (a Fortune 500 company with $185 billion in assets), the La-Z-Boy Corporation (one of the largest and most recognized furniture brands worldwide), and Dots Stores (a chain of fashion boutiques with more than 400 locations across the country).
As a professional speaker, Dr. Qubein has received many distinctions including the Golden Gavel Medal, induction into the International Speaker Hall of Fame, and as the founder of the NSA Foundation in Arizona.
He has been the recipient of many honors including The Ellis Island Medal of Honor (along with four U.S. presidents), The Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans (along with Oprah Winfrey and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas), the DAR Americanism Medal, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, Sales and Marketing International's Ambassador of Free Enterprise, Leadership North Carolina Governor's Award, and Citizen of the Year and Philanthropist of the Year in his home city of High Point, North Carolina.